Maria Mocerino

Love is the greatest invention

3809 words.  

“Love is the greatest invention,” my father wrote. He crossed out the word invention though and penciled in inspiration. I drew a line through inspiration and circled invention. It was more appropriate. He would never know, judging by the dusty cover. His days of verse were far behind him at seventy years old. I was nine. I wondered about the correlation between the two words and specifically invention as a link between both my parents.

Just like that—imagine that? At four years old, in some weird house—mine—I was smashing Barbie heads together. I didn’t cuddle with Dr. J—that’s my mother’s real nickname—I studied her. She was a pathological liar; at four, I didn’t have this language, but I tested her, sure. In her haute couture and red wig du jour, Dr. J came from outer space with eyes full of stars. Now was she a pathological liar or was she not? What was the truth, what wasn’t? Thirty years later, I don’t know, but her stories suggested a sordid past, possibly criminal, terrible, and a departure from reality itself. But are there realities that, in fact, depart from reality? Is this really happening? Does this really happen? What do you do when it does? Forget illusion, it was all a delusion, and there was much truth in it. Invention, invention—it was her inspiration…accosting the priest every Sunday with the stories of her rapes in a white mink coat. He was terrified of her; that was my mother. Was she, was she not? By the looks of it­, at four, it could have been true once upon a time. Hard to tell, sort of, except, it seemed like it. Terminal illnesses? Make a list. Sob stories? “I’ve got plenty, but who cares, no big deal…” Dr. J acted like a Disney princess with fireworks exploding over her head, a Grimm’s fairytale originally that my future mother described as “do you know Creulla di Vil? From 101 Dalmations?” A cartoon villain. “Are your eyes purple?” I asked her with my Martinelli’s at four. I was testing her. No was the obvious answer, but hers wasn’t that straightforward. But haha! She could pop like Jack in Box, fire one off—“AH!”— and sigh. Who was being deceptive or deceitful here? That’s exactly right. A mirror. She covered her office walls in mirrors that reflected one another. Collectible tea cup sets sat on pedestals. Her expertise? Dr. J was apparently a prodigy on top of it. Taxes. She was a true buffoon.

Talking about my parents sounds like invention which was part of the problem I ran into as the years went on. People remarked that my story sounded like something you’d see on TV, not real life though we often say that real life is stranger than fiction. You can’t make this shit up. It’s all made up. “It’s just a story;” how many times have I heard that? I appeared to come out of a fairytale; dark beginnings that might inspire the imagination even someone bright to navigate through a dark world with it.

Well, I was smashing Barbie heads together, what can I say? A stranger from Brazil, a mother, took one step into my house and froze. Gabriela was the stork that flew in and snatched a baby back to Miracle Mile for four years not expecting to. Miracles—invented? Sentence one in Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks read: “I want to create miracles” not flying machines. Love—was that an invention in my case? My Brazilian Mama with an angel’s name spoke of nothing else—love, love, love. It was the reason to breathe and get sexy as in dance. I watched a family unite around a song about heartbreak called the lambada. Love even in shattered pieces can inspire music, even joy. That was my mother’s name.

In a clear snap of her sassy fingers—a mother made of fire—I started living with her “just like that.” Overnight. Dr. J hooked Gabriela with money and lies that my father was a child molester. Called her every day, never asked to speak to me, and lavished her—which would make her cringe and shutter—with sickeningly sweet talk. After all, Dr. J was paying for it. Why…why this game? There seemed to be no other game. Her eyes ran like faucets to this lady who had her hands full with six kids already and now me—a child, wait, I mean baby. I didn’t know a four-year-old was a baby for another thirty years. I had problems. She believed this wacko, all the same; my behavior seemed to suggest some screwy shit was going on.

I remember that day as if it were today, forget yesterday, when she pulled me into her room with soft brown hair falling over her tanned shoulders like feathers. I could never see my father again. I would be kidnapped. I hadn’t seen either one of my parents for however long I had been there, so I was confused, but I knew what this was about. Dr. J had a repertoire, let’s say. What I know—and I had to hang onto that and also let go of that—is that this woman came up with a game to get the bastard. She was keeping me safe, now, you see.

“Protect my baby,” Dr. J said. (She was nowhere to be found.)

From what I remember, the man who wrote the line—love is the greatest invention—returned home from a work trip…and he started calling the house as if I were a cousin. Kicking her sneaks, Gabriela wanted his balls bad. Shall I describe the way the light came into the kitchen? Clean and bright and even sparkling like a holy hour? It was fresh—morning, one to remember. We were playing very nice, a dead word brought back to life, with the child molester. She performed for me, even, perching herself upright, laughing but just laughing at my father.

“Oh?! Wow! Oh no…”   

She stuck her finger in her mouth at me awaiting my cue.

 “I doubt she wants to go…”

She sincerely regretted it, even relished it, and pitched herself straight up in a tennis skirt. “Oh sure!! Of course!! Of course,” she was gracious, generous; she had forgotten herself.  “You can talk to her…”

She cracked up and reassured him.  

“She’s right here—very safe.”

 That was my cue to run over.

He invited me to go on vacation with him. She shook her head no like I was a good little girl. His voice reached for me to say that he loved me, and I could hear the strain in it, but I was living in a complete stranger’s house. He had no clue who this lady was. Neither did my mother, just to specify. No, I didn’t ask to go home—haha, how funny, I could laugh, you know.

She grabbed the phone before he could finish “love”—not a chance. She thanked him wholeheartedly for calling and wished him the most but the most wonderful day. She slammed the phone, cursed his existence in Portuguese. And then, like always, we rehearsed my script for the lawyers; when that day would come. We were really going to “give it to him” then.

“And what are you going to say to the lawyers?”

She pointed at my little face.

“I want to live with my moder…” who came over “like twice” to put on an aria, falling out of her limousine and top. It was over the top; she rushed into this woman’s house in a red wig du jour, dripping in fur and evening couture, wreaking of alcohol. She had never seen such a breathtaking girl: this woman’s daughter standing beside me. She took the stage and performed for the nosebleeds; it was an opera of ignoring me completely, fawning all over this poor girl. Didn’t even look at me.

It’s not an exaggeration; Dr. J was pure theater, a performance artist, but I suppose people can exaggerate—it was “like crazy” when it really was. This other mother had to perform Dr. J just to describe her and the effect she had on her. We can invent if not heighten or multiply “it was like a thousand days until I got to the counter” as in “that’s what it felt like.” No seriously, this is what it was—regardless.

But maybe, maybe, maybe. Even that—invention came with the territory. “Based on what you’re saying”—I was four. And based on what I am saying? “She gave you away to save you from herself…” People loved to invent all sorts of reasons why she did what she did. No, no, it’s true. They didn’t even need to be there. It was exactly what my mother did—on a whole new level.

My story defied expectations just taking that my mother had money, not my father. She’d want me to specify that—all hers, even if she extorted 15,000 dollars out of her sister so I could go to a special school for gifted children called “the University for Children,” as in this situation. The phrase “that’s just how the world worked” was not true; that was an invention though very true. It could work differently.

It was shocking, unbelievable, offensive. The “haze” that came across Gabriela’s face as if she had been knocked outside of “frameworks of knowledge” as I came to understand it. It was “from another world” in other words. It was an effective tactic for such an innocent; Dr. J was the most innocent human being to the point of buffoonery. So was my father—“who me?”

When my father knocked on her front door—to visit me—he obeyed. He was not allowed to cross the threshold. Nothing was stated directly because—wink—we knew, didn’t we? My Brazilian Mama’s niceness was the knife on his dick, forget throat, ready to slice it off. Excuse me, um, I don’t mean to get graphic, but that’s what it was. The door was wide open; her arms crossed, she smiled tightly and waved at us with delight.

Running, jumping, screaming across the foyer, her daughter and I had been instructed to play happier, harder, louder for this mother fucker with a nice, fake smile on my face: hers. I had to ignore him by pushing the play so far that I have the license to invent to showcase the truth of it; shaking the curtains, blowing bubbles. She gave us her ear; we weren’t being loud enough. She could not stop thanking him for stopping by, how lovely it was to share this moment together. “She’s safe.” She slammed the door—nicely—in this man’s face. We high-fived and ran my script.

What to say about inventions? It worked.

No one cares about an invention that doesn’t.

I don’t even know what to say about love.

Except, it was “love, love, love.” She wanted that for me. Ah, I invent. I guess we do that; it’s understandable. We find ways to connect, to make it about ourselves. She was all about “love, love, love.” That I know.

She decided that my father wasn’t a child molester. Dr. J bounced, owed her money; she was the biggest liar that ever was—a legend—but in her case, forget the difference. I said that over and over again to listeners if not spectators and it sounded like a line out of a story, which is true, no? In the end? Just a story with disbelief coming at me, maybe even my own, so it took me thirty years to realize it; I thought, oh, why not write a story about my life? She made up out of thin air that he wasn’t. There’s no reality to be found, anywhere.

Who do you trust?

I was four.

She told my father, also, and that memory, when it came to me, was one of those—I grasped it. Even remembering can get inventive. Was it that? Did that? Did she tell him? What my mother said? Jesus Christ, she did. I think so. “Cool, she can just stay with you…until I figure this out…” He didn’t make the connection—not really. “You were brainwashed against me!” He said with fervor, hazy, later. This woman, bless her, did it all. She didn’t even ask me a question, not until I was released back into my father’s custody four years later. He brought me home to mirrors being smashed off the walls.

The further I investigated this insanity, the more suspicious it sounded and the more physical my experience became. He was then diagnosed with Parkinson’s and he didn’t tell anybody. But my mother’s insanity—and yes, all mothers are crazy; I even got that reflection with a team of mothers in my mind graining back—cast my father in shadow who played an extra in a movie of the same name: The Shadow.

When I found out about that “secret diagnosis” at twenty, it was now Alzheimer’s, and I couldn’t even process that information. “I told him ten years ago he had onset Parkinson’s!” His doctor said. I never recovered from the shock. I had been so manipulated by that point. I found a couple of other families by then. I couldn’t go back through these years with him for another ten years.

“And she believed her own lies!”

My father would cry; it was his final defense when I asked him to consider his responsibility in all this…while he had “secret dementia.” And sure, “the illness” did it, but he lied about it and put it on me to the point of violence that I stopped at twelve. Now, the “child molester story” since it exists was true then not true and no one dealt with it as a real story, regardless. Was that my mother’s “joke?” Look, there’s one woman out there—my Brazilian Mama—who might nod…Dr. J was scary. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time I would hear about this real story causing a spectacle of inventions. Could it make a family member appear even more innocent—as a mask? Could the victim even get the blame: a child. That’s what happened to me—regardless.

Through this shattered world of hers, these stories, I felt her past. I heard “remember me” in my head at four, yes, before I left for this fiasco spacing out in my mother’s office of mirrors. That was a baby ninja in action. It was too traumatic and specific even if she was a drug addict. I don’t know what to say; it was only recently that I reopened all this, but it’s a touch too common: child molestation. 1 out of 4 girls—to start. It’s extremely challenging, no? In that, you know lines can be crossed again…and nothing but nothing might be done about it. You don’t want to know that.

Suddenly, my father became paranoid that I would be raped—yes. Dementia? It was that bad already. At the time, I thought that this story “we” went through, not capable to wrap my mind around it yet, had eaten him alive though it didn’t seem that way, really, so this was a perversion of some kind. That I knew. It had gotten him worked up, worried that I might be raped if he left me alone to run the errands; that was his reasoning, which I thought might have been the news, too, but that’s just the thing—people invent. Sure, “it’s true,” wink, but people tend to fill in the blanks with what they think, know, comes next. I just did it myself as this Brazilian mother did.

"Oh, a woman would never lie about such a thing? About her husband?” Oh, a woman would never…allow? Her husband? Wouldn’t get jealous? Hear me. That’s what my father said after all this: “she wanted to tear us apart!” I was four. Gabriela even told me that my mother handled me inappropriately, shaking her hand at me. I was nine; I had these pieces almost thirty years later without a throughline beginning to write a little story about my life. I get that there are “no reliable narrators” but where does that put me? In this world—regardless.

She pushed—not suggested—onto me that I was “jealous” of my mother fawning all over her daughter whose face flashed horror at me, embarrassed, like she didn’t understand; she was seven. Like I would ever do that to someone…let alone a child. Ah, but it’s normal, she said, that a girl would want her mother’s attention—no, no, no. Not in my case. And exactly. I have seen this kind of behavior. It’s normal when it’s not. Because “it’s true,” you can even teach someone twisted logic because “it’s true.” I know you can manipulate someone; that’s real with “true stories.”

I felt an energy in my room I couldn’t explain. Kid stuff. I wondered if something happened though since my feeling didn’t go away. “Someone was raped in your room,” my father said. The housekeeper of the last owner; he even showed me how the assailant entered. Thirty years later, a therapist would say “well, didn’t he have dementia at this time?” So what am I to do? Am I to dig up the case that was never solved, as my father said, to figure out what the truth is? I couldn’t place myself in any reality. My mother spoke about rape so casually to some, at least, and was it true? Her manner might have been abrupt, but if you’re a priest…I’ll extend a hand to him so he wouldn’t have to say it…my mother was quite twisted. She threw herself on any and every man…that was standard.

I’m not sure if that’s what really happened since you’d think, immediately—whoa, the priest? But Gabriela might be able to imagine it in her case. That’s a line; sure, that is crossed the other way around. Did something really happen between her and a priest once upon a time? That’s what I mean. And in terms of reflecting a larger truth in her ballgowns that she wore to church, was it not a show? Was this, in one form or another, not a real problem in the Catholic Church? In this setting, if you would, it was an optical illusion, reality, um, what’s the difference?

The only thing my father knew about my mother—he knew nothing and neither did I—was that she was shipped around to different family members beginning when she was two years old because her sister beat her. True? “She believed her own lies!” He said it, but he didn’t question this story. It’s a challenge for most people to hold that kind of reality. Someone can tell you that they are the biggest liar and you still won’t get it. And the man denying his dementia said that she believed her own lies. Now, “the illness” did it—that’s not the issue. She was sick, too. “In the head,” yes, and?

I went across the universe and back, though, ripping through these boxes like I gave a shit about my baby pictures. Was I home? A couple of times during these four years? That thought plunged me into despair, gripping onto the rails of what I knew. Did that make the whole thing not true? What was true? Photographs across the floor, I was home a few times. Did she send me home with these people? I remembered that, but I didn’t even put together that this memory happened in these four years. I had pieces without a throughline. Where did I sleep? I didn’t have my own bed in this house, just to add that detail. I don’t know, in the end, if I had a break from reality or reality came together.

I held onto the lie for dear life, though I had an experience that might have suggested otherwise. Thank God for a friend in a mother who said “you start with I believe you.” Regardless if there is invention, you work out the truth in time, because some truths might be hard to believe or wrap your mind around especially if you were four, but then, the question isn’t “what is true” about what someone is saying. If you can’t handle real life off the screen, then get someone who can. But of course, I’m talking about “the mental health crisis” that I went through that was my real life—not just mental. My story was always what it was. After I went through it, it was not the same world, but there was no way I was leaving that behind without my mind intact. My feelings are a different subject, no?  

“Love,” my father said, “is the greatest invention.” During my time of crisis, I saw many many characters being born at various points on the real journey that had ideas as to what I could do with this story…child molesters, innocent men, superhero villains, a Kill Bill version of a mother taking the “destroy the child molester game” to a whole new level and even families coming together. So many directions: comedic, tearful, redemption stories, and a chance for me to write them. I would get through this; I could let go of the truth and reach for a deeper one—call it a fiction; my story was called “a fiction in real life.” I could invent new worlds with the same stuff and offer something of substance. Characters told me not to give up no matter if they were good, bad, or in their own category leading me through this loopy line between the binaries. There were so many ways a story could go…I could show that another way was possible. It was classic, even.

A father erupted for me upon hearing what had been said about him and I cried, it was so moving; no one did it so I invented it. I could tell that story though…of a father who wakes up and causes a scene or a Joker who reveals some terrible truth about the truth—is there no such thing? Love, the only thing that’s real, this is what I’ve heard—the greatest invention. It even made me laugh: his line. It turned out to be true, the anecdote in the poison. I invented many stories to help me through the real one because there was love—something to give? Even a drama.

In the end, invented or not, love turned out to be miraculous, the truest healing force that exists.